All over the world divers risk their lives in the perilous business of retrieving pearls from the bottom of the sea. In Japan the amas are always women; they plunge as deep as 40 feet with nothing more to protect them from the sharks, sea eels, and jellyfish than the hook-nosed iron knife they use to dislodge the oysters.

This is my eighth journal entry of a series of journal entries that I have submitted about my experiences with business and the management environment and this one is about the reward system in business.